Fruit - Gooseberry

Gooseberries are grown on bushes. My first gooseberry bush produced a good crop each year, but when it had to be replaced, the replacement didn't do as well, so perhaps variety is important (but regretably I didn't make a note of the first variety!) At the moment, I have two, a green fruit and a purple fruit.

Pruning helps keep the bush fairly small. The gooseberry bush has long thorns, so it's definitely a case of pruning in gloves! One of the myths about where babies come from is that they were found under a gooseberry bush. To which I say - Ouch!

Be very careful when picking the gooseberries. I use a leather gardening glove on my left hand (I'm right-handed) and use that hand to bend over the branches to see the fruit, so I can pick them. The fruit hangs under the branch, so each branch needs to be bent over to see the fruit from the branch above.

Several years running, my goosberry bushes had nearly all their leaves eaten by something, and very few goosberries. The bushes survived, and last year the leaves were OK (see photo), and I got some gooseberries, ut not yet very many.

I regret not having lots of gooseberries! I enjoy cooking with them. There are fairly large pips, so I cook them with a little water until soft, then seive them to remove the pips, before using. This makes a puree. My favourite is goosberry fool. I also use them to make goosberry sauce to go with roast goose (for Christmas), because I was delighted to find out that was where the name comes from! I don't have a recipe for gooseberry sauce, as it's just gooseberry puree, heated, with a little butter.

My recipe for gooseberries:

Fool

Gooseberry bush